You and I are going to have a lot of good times together," says Mr. Horton's apartment at the back of his bicycle shop, filled with video games, toys, and treats. Horton tells Arnold that if he can help get the word out about a sale the shop is running, he'll throw in a free radio for his new set of wheels.Īrnold recruits the help of his friend, Dudley, and eventually the two of them discover Mr.
Drummond gives in, saying that he'll get it for Arnold's birthday. Drummond that he could save money by just buying bikes, Arnold begs for a bicycle of his own. Horton, the owner of a bicycle shop that the Drummonds regularly rent bikes from. However, of all of the 1980s sitcoms, it seems those pesky Drummond kids managed to get themselves into trouble the most! Let me just copy and paste a key sentence on Wikipedia about the icky topics that Diff'rent Strokes addressed during its 8-season run: " Diff'rent Strokes featured some very special episodes that involved child molestation, child pornography, pedophilia, hitchhiking, kidnapping, epileptic seizure, bullies, racism, bulimia, drunk driving and drug abuse."
Can the same be said for many current sitcoms such as Modern Family or Two Broke Girls? Today's cowardly television writers would never take a chance on such heavy stuff. These "very special episodes" as they would come to be labeled, are part of the reason my TV generation fondly remembers these shows decades after they originally aired. I've mentioned on Go Retro before how fascinating it is to me that many situation "comedies" of the 1980s would occasionally cover a controversial topic to try to teach the viewer some moral lessons all within 23 minutes - such as Punky Brewster being bullied into trying drugs or Carol Seever's boyfriend dying after a drunk driving accident in Growing Pains. I'll try, however, to maybe add my own thoughts about this "very special episode" which I watched for the first time on Video Dailymotion last night (some parts of it were removed from YouTube for copyright violation.) Much has been written online about the creepy Diff'rent Strokes "Bicycle Man" episode - like the episode of Too Close for Comfort where Monroe was kidnapped and raped by a woman and a transvestite, "The Bicycle Man" seems to have taken on a life of its own.
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